421 Responses

There was a first wave in the spring that affected the vulnerable and then it seemed to go away. Six months later it came back and this time young adults got sick with very high mortality. The question is whether we are seeing the first or the second wave.

Or - a grim and nasty thought - whether the cases outside Mexico are the first wave, but Mexico has reached the second wave. That would be...not great.

Until someone can actually confirm the veracity of those comments, they're on the best-friend's-sister's-dog-walker-said level of accuracy.

Your best friend's sister has a dog walker? Fancy.

the Guardian report is slightly alarming:

"It's all psychological," said 20-year-old Edgar, an emo whose fringe covered most of his face. "I think it is a plot by the government to control us," Well, the first 90% of that story is interviewing said emos and someone who revealed that "you can't see it". Not really insightful analysis, but I agree that the final point about the pattern of infection is an interesting one.

Actually, those opening credits are a nasty reminder of how fast a serious disease can spread round the world - and that was in 1976! Since then, globalisation and the massive increase in international travel will have only made it worse, while the importance of tourism and trade makes governments incapable of a proper response until it is too late.

Actually that's not entirely true the single best way to limit the spread is for people to wash their hands with soap and water for one rendition of Happy Birthday. Seriously :).

I was living in Toronto when SARS broke out there. And yes staying home if you felt sick was actively encouraged. I also recall that every public building from office blocks to banks had a decontamination point on the front door or lobby dishing out squirts of hand sanitiser. Washing your hands is one of the single easiest and most effective things you can do. I do recall stocking up on 36 toilet rolls ... oh wait, that was an online shopping order gone wrong.

Come back when you've worked in Big Pharma, the man-hating Lesbian-Marxists and the Jooows...

I do kind of wonder how this thread turned into something about how the bad right wing people cause the flu. Or something. Rich - how limited is your sick leave that you can't actually take it when sick? And how crappy is your employer if you think it's great to skive off them? That's the sort of thing that actually causes sick leave entitlements to be reduced.

I mean, come on, the evil right wing business set does enough ACTUAL bad shit without making them responsible for flu pandemics as well.

Also, I worked on the pandemic strategy a few years back when it was being developed for bird flu. If anything, the legal powers available are overly draconian (fairly stringent detention powers for sick people). And we have heaps of tamiflu, which appears to work. And easily controllable entry to the country. So even if this gets really bad, which its not likely to do, we're in relatively good shape.

Meanwhile, so long as we're talking about history, the top roading police offers describes New Zealand roads as the Killing Fields since having a sense of proportions is obviously not part of the job description.